Makerbot

If you’ve followed the news, a collective of hackers recently rented a 3D printer to build a real, working gun. The group, Defense Distributed ,began the project but once the renter, Stratasys, discovered what they were building, they took the printer back.
Writes the Danger Room:
Cody Wilson planned in the coming weeks to make and test a 3-D printed pistol. Now those plans have been put… Read More

The handsomest man in the world, Bre Pettis, gives the second handsomest man in the world, Phil Torrone, a nice visit to the Makerbot Store in Manhattan. The store is now selling Makerbots, filament, as well as pre-made items like watches and toys.
The store is at 298 Mulberry Street. Read More

Makerbot has just announced the Replicator 2.0, a brand new Makerbot Replicator with a larger build plate, coated metal chassis, and improved software as well as better print resolution. In short, this is the Makerbot all grown up.
As you can see from the video, the new Replicator is completely rebuilt with new materials and a larger cavity that allows you to make projects of up to 410… Read More

In theory, this Kickstarter project aiming to sell a sub-$2,000 MakerBot clone shouldn’t be that much of a big deal. The MakerBot Replicator, one of the first (and best) home 3D printers in the world, is an open source product, and as such, anyone with a little wood, some soldering experience, and a dream should be able to build one – or a hundred and one. But in practice the… Read More

It’s been months in the making, but here it is: the first episode of TechCrunch Makers, featuring Bre Pettis of Makerbot. We visited Bre’s downtown Brooklyn factory where he and the rest of team design, build, and ship hundreds of Makerbots a week. Read More

Works of art are timeless and now, thanks to Makerbot and the Met, they can be deathless, too. A June 1 hackathon brought a group of artists and hackers together at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art where they 3D scanned a number of well-known pieces of art. The work is now appearing on Thingiverse where you can download and print things like the head and shoulders of a sphinx and Bather… Read More

Makerbot creator Bre Pettis and his musician friends from Scary Car made this cute little video featuring 3D printed action figures being created in (near) real-time and then discovering love. Read More

We got a great look at the new Makerbot Replicator and, more important, we sat down with founder Bre Pettis to talk about the future. His take? The future is here and 3D printing is one of the things that will change the world.
Pettis built the first Makerbot at NYC Resistor, a hackerspace in Brooklyn. He realized the potential was, in a sense, infinite and, thousands of sales later, Makerbot… Read More

MakerBot has just announced the MakerBot Replicator, a new, larger replicator that is larger than a breadbox (literally) and supports Dualstrusion 2-color printing.
With a build envelope that’s roughly the size of a loaf of bread, The MakerBot Replicator™ gives you the power to go big. Make an entire chess set with the press of a button. Friends, classmates, co-workers, and family… Read More

Rather than looking back (which I’m sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I’ve included mobile, gaming, and computing gadgets but I think 2012 will also be the year of Windows Phone, 3D printing, and fitness technology that actually makes a difference.
I’m… Read More

Makerbot’s Thing-O-Matic is pretty pricey – $1,299 for the kit and $2,500 for the assembled kit – but (and this is my professional opinion) it is amazing and everyone in the world should own one. That said, Fab.com has a special deal on Thing-O-Matics this week – $999 for the kit and $2,000 for the assembled device – one of the first and biggest discounts ever on… Read More

We’re big fans of the home 3D printer here. It’s a truly disruptive technology, though for now the cost is still a bit too high, and the uses aren’t quite practical enough, for it to be a household item just yet. But that hasn’t stopped people from putting it to good use.
Project Shellter is one of the most interesting applications of the technology I’ve seen. Read More

This project on Thingiverse is just about amazing. It’s a complete lock and key set made entirely using open source plans and a printed on a Makerbot. It can only be opened using the right key (or, given it’s made of plastic, a lighter) but it’s the engineering that clearly counts here. Read More

Now this is some pretty hardcore dorkitude, but our buddies at Makerbot just released a new extruder for their building devices. Why is it special? Well, the first extruders did 3mm streams while this one does 1.75mm streams, increasing the “resolution” of the objects and question and allowing you to extrude two streams of hot plastic simultaneously. Read More

MakerBot Industries, creator of home 3D printers, has announced a total of $10 million in funding from a number of investors, the bulk coming from Foundry Group. Also included in the round were Bezos Expeditions, True Ventures, and RRE, along with a dozen or so angel investors.
The company started in 2009 with around $75,000 in seed money, and since then has put together and sold some 5200… Read More

The folks at Makerbot made a bust of Stephen Colbert and gave him a copy when they appeared on his show a month or so ago. Not content to let it just moulder in the shop, they decided to attach it to a weather balloon and send it up over Long Island. The resulting video and images are striking: the Great Eagle himself in flight high over the salty waves of the Atlantic, overtopping the… Read More

Chris Dixon heads down the homestretch of his Founder Stories interview with Bre Pettis and the two touch on the fact that the barriers to entry for founders foaming at the mouth to launch hardware startups are being washed away.
Pettis says, “we’re seeing this startup culture come into hardware, where normally this was just the realm of the really big companies who could afford to… Read More

As Bre Pettis continues his conversation with Founder Stories host, Chris Dixon, the two discuss the challenges of running a business that literally requires nuts and bolts assembly. In this situation, scaling brings a whole new set of challenges unfamiliar to many software start-ups.
Hardware is just a different game. For example, as Pettis tells it, “we ran out of motors, we bought… Read More

In this episode of Founder Stories, host Chris Dixon takes a look at a 3D printer while talking to the maker behind the MakerBot, Bre Pettis.
If printing 3D objects sounds impressive, think about this. Pettis thinks “it’s early days”—drawing comparisons to early PC’s like the Altair. About the size of a mini-fridge, the Makerbot ships for $1,299 and allows users… Read More